


Squeeze the soul for a bit of calm

by jaythewriter



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Comfort/Angst, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 08:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4093996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaythewriter/pseuds/jaythewriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Jay…”</p><p>“Tim,” he says his name fast, waiting, not daring to tear his eyes from the man before him. </p><p>Jay can’t breathe.</p><p>“Just, hold me, hold me and if you laugh at me I’ll fucking punch you in the face.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Squeeze the soul for a bit of calm

**Author's Note:**

> Was inspired by a scene in MASH where Margaret has a breakdown and demands Hawkeye to hold her, and it ends in a kind of unexpected way.  
> Trigger warnings for blood mentions and breakdowns.

Tim is quiet when he wakes from nightmares.

He never makes a fuss, never kicks the covers from the bed, never cries out for shelter or comfort. The man takes it with a grace that Jay didn’t think was possible and wonders if it is even healthy. 

Jay has thought to ask him why he will rise from bed, sweat clinging to his tan skin and stomach heaving for the breath he just cannot catch, and then move on like it’s nothing. Sometimes he’ll wander into the bathroom and dismantle the smoke alarm, taking his pack of cigarette in with him. He’s taken showers, washing off the clinging stench of bad dreams instead of actually opening his mouth. 

But instead, Jay drowns himself in video tapes, in codes, so that Tim can have his privacy. Last time Jay went digging without explicit permission, he wore a black eye for two whole weeks and then had to dodge questions from hotel maids bearing cases of misplaced concern. He got the message: Tim might as well be wearing a sign on his neck, the words ‘DO NOT ENTER’ painted on in bold red lettering. 

Sometimes, when Tim raises up and has to pant his lungs back into proper function, he whips his head to the side and stares at Jay, like he might be having trouble believing he’s there. Or, maybe he’s thinking about approaching him, speaking to him. He came as close to doing so when he uttered Jay’s name one evening, when he jerked up and looked straight at the camera, angled so it maintains a watchful eye over the both of their beds.

Jay lifted his head, acknowledging his call, but Tim never did say anything to him. He stared, and Jay stared back, but he found no answers in the man’s face. As usual. 

He doesn’t need a mask to keep himself hidden.

Theories as to why Tim behaves this way float around Jay’s mind. Jay cannot help himself; he is a detective as of late, he has to think things through, deduce and hope that his mind has reached out broadly enough that the answer lies in one of his ideas. 

Tim might be scared to open up because of his upbringing. Waking up nightly, screaming, and immediately being rushed by his parent(s?). No, no more of this, you are disrupting our sleep for ridiculous reasons, you must get over yourself.

So no more screaming.

The other theories aren’t as clear, don’t have as much of a sturdy root in reality, so Jay sticks with this one. He clings to it, reminding himself that Tim would let him know if he needed him. Tim is a grown man and he knows how to ask for help. It’s nothing against Jay, he’s lived for many years and had this burden on his sinking shoulders-- Tim is experienced in talking down the thudding organ within his chest.

It’s definitely nothing against Jay. Nothing at all.

This is what Jay is used to-- up until Tim balls it up and throws his traditions out the window. 

Going to bed that winter-chilled evening takes a monumental amount of effort on Jay’s part. He clung to the laptop for a good deal of it, ignoring Tim, who ignored him back. They were good at that, ignoring, though it wasn’t because they exactly disliked each other. 

(In Jay’s case, he definitely didn’t dislike Tim. Maybe it’s just been a while since he’s met a good looking guy who actually spoke to him. Or maybe Tim is genuinely beautiful and he came to him, helped him, /him/, when he had every right to hate him--)

Life can become monotonous, exhausting, when one is running from town to town searching for a man who fell off the map covered in the blood of those he once called friend. It’s a lot of the same, lots of ‘no, we don’t know who Alex Kralie is’, lots of ‘sirs, please leave the property’.

Sometimes it’s worth talking about, and those are the evenings that Jay and Tim will stay up through the night, until the sun burns away the night clouds. Other times, though, it’s too fucking frustrating to give it any further thought beyond what is necessary. 

Tonight is one of the nights of silence. 

Jay keeps his head down, scratches out the numbers from totheark onto a piece of paper provided by the hotel. Lines and lines of pencil marks blur before his eyes, creating an ocean that he could very easily drown in. 

Tim’s on his phone, playing Candy Crush. The volume is up high and it announces his every excellent move-- /Tasty/. It’s not a game Jay ever expected to hear him playing, too bright and childish, but last he checked Tim’s actually further along than Jay is.

Then again, Jay doesn’t get as much time to play.

By the time Jay had knocked down about fifty potential meanings to totheark’s code, his eyes were watering and Tim was hooking his phone up to the outlet meant for the lamp neither of them switched on. He then rolls onto his side and sighs, apparently content to sleep without the blankets over him and his shoes laced up on his feet.

Shaking his head, Jay follows his example for once. Shutting his laptop down, he puts it off to the side, knowing he’ll likely be back on it before the night is through. The notepaper is put down beside it, though he’s considering trashing it and abandoning the code altogether. Not like those riddles give him many answers when he solves them; if anything he comes away more befuddled and doubly frustrated.

Still. He knows he’ll work on the code later, maybe not tonight but sometime sooner than later. 

Jay can’t tell when he wakes, or if he ever actually fell asleep. What he does know is that there is darkness one moment, and when he opens his eyes it isn’t there anymore. 

He sits up and looks around, confirms that he is indeed still in the same room he put his head down in.

Cracked television screen, check. Bags full of tapes and changes of clothes dropped unceremoniously in the corner, check. Camera, standing where it ought to be and glowing red eye winking from across the room, check. 

Tim, curled up into a tired ball, check.

Jay’s eyes rest on Tim the longest. He hasn’t so much as twitched from his original position, though his eyes are roving beneath his eyelids, chasing figures that stand bright in his brain but are otherwise invisible to Jay. Regardless of what he must see, he lays there and blocks out the world against all odds. Outside, the roads gleam from the light of passing cars, their tires rattling the manholes that they drive over. The world spins on.

And--

Tim joins in, bolting upright, every ounce of tension in the world finding its way into his muscles and sitting there, setting up camp for god knows however long. He cries out, sweat beading upon his tan skin. It settles into the front of his shirt, soaking him. Might as well have gone running into the shower clothed and let it drench him. 

Jay sits, hands up at his sides, eyes wide and brain gone somewhere he can’t reach. He knows he should be beside Tim, figuring out what’s wrong and fixing it, but, /how/? What can he do to get an answer out of a man screaming himself hoarse? His voice rises and tears up his insides-- he clutches his throat, wheezing out a high pitched cough that could be a scream but he doesn’t have the power to utter such a sound now.

“Tim, you’re alright,” Jay sputters, trying to pretend he believes his own words. He darts over to his side at last, taking the man’s hands from where they’ve gone to tug at his hair. Several strands come away with his clenched fists, the knuckles white and refusing to budge. Jay rubs at his hands, trying to coax them into opening for him, praying that Tim can’t feel him shaking. “You’re alright, Tim, you’re just-- you were dreaming, you were only dreaming.”

Brown eyes catch onto Jay’s, barely able to hold his gaze. Tim breathes hard and fast, his chest heaving until Jay squeezes his fists, and he finally lets go, fingers trembling. He falls forward, head pressed into Jay’s shoulder, all barriers forgotten and put aside.

“I was fighting it, the, uh, not the /it/, the other one,” Tim utters. He could have run a marathon, his shoulders rising and falling too fast for Jay’s liking, his breaths shallow and puffing. “The mask. They wanted to take you away, ‘cos, you were keeping them from coming out. And Brian, he was watching, oozing… blood, so much /blood/, could see his bones…”

He trails off, words lost into the safe confines of Jay’s shoulder. Tim’s arms come up and pin Jay to him, not entirely an embrace but he hangs onto Jay, keeps him from floating away. He doesn’t know where he’d go to but Tim clearly thinks he could go somewhere and isn’t having any of it.

“It doesn’t matter what it was, it wasn’t real,” Jay says, wincing as he reaches for his words a second too late. In retrospect, he has to wonder if he sounded dismissive instead of comforting. He takes Tim’s shoulders, pushing him to lift his head and meeting him eye to eye again. “I mean, it sounds horrible, but I promise. There isn’t anything here to hurt you. It’s just me.”

Tim stares, not quite seeing but he does see Jay, looks at nothing else, doesn’t see the world beyond him. He isn’t awake enough, or he doesn’t want to be awake and face more beyond what is sitting before him. Safety. Jay is safety.

(He hopes he is safety. He wants to be safety.)

“Jay…”

“Tim,” he says his name fast, waiting, not daring to tear his eyes from the man before him. 

The hands that he held mere seconds ago (held, he held his hands, he’s touching him when he hasn’t touched in months, maybe years, and it’s foreign, scary, beautiful, breath-taking, the feeling of human skin, trusting human skin)-- they come up, and cling to him. They grab at the back of his shirt, bunching it up, stretching the cotton material. 

Jay can’t breathe.

“Just, hold me, hold me and if you laugh at me I’ll fucking punch you in the face.”

As if there’s any way on God’s green earth that he would laugh at Tim for this, but he doesn’t say that. If anything he wants to thank him. Thank you, thank you for trusting him when people stare at him, suspicion lining their faces, pulling their lips into a frown. Tim will provide him with the same gaze, wary waves rolling off of the walls his high shoulders create and crashing into Jay. 

Jay wouldn’t trust himself either, but he wishes he could.

“Keep telling me I’m here,” Tim demands of him, nails scratching into Jay’s back. It doesn’t hurt, the stinging sensation is there but Tim’s heat is stronger. He runs his hands up and down the length of Tim’s spine, feels the bones standing out, sharp and defensive. Tim is warm and real.

Wonderfully real.

“You’re here,” Jay says. He obeys, no hesitation, this is something he can actually do. So simple and it helps, he’s helping, he’s /helping/ for once. He pats Tim’s back, gently coaxing him to come in closer, and he does, soft flesh against bones. They don’t fit snug together, but they force it, a pair of puzzle pieces mashed together in the hopes of finding completion. “You’re here, in this hotel, with me. You’re here at the Four Seasons, you woke up where you fell asleep, and you’re here. Nowhere else, and I’m not going anywhere. You’re here.”

“Hold me,” Tim sputters, his voice breaking. He shakes harder with each word Jay speaks. Jay can almost feel how white the man’s knuckles must be against his back. “Hold me, Jay.”

“I am holding you, Tim, I’ve got you, I promise,” Jay insists in turn. How he’s meant to make it any more clear that he’s here, he has no idea, he takes Tim’s head and holds him to his heart, presses his mouth into the top of his head. There is no thought behind the action and Jay doesn’t realize what he’s done until Tim wrenches away from him. For a split second, he’s certain he’s made a mistake, sees a feral look in the man’s eyes and oh, shit, he’s going to get punched like Tim promised him. “Wait, fuck, I’m sorry--”

A mouth on his mouth, and it’s over. He’s a vicious kisser, or perhaps he is only like this when he has nothing to lose. Regardless, Tim might be trying to suck his soul out of him, or what’s left of it. Too many biting teeth in Jay’s lip, a hand that wanders too close to his neck, too much, too much, too much.

Jay lets himself be shoved down against the bed, where he doesn’t know if Tim is going to choke him or maybe even fuck him, but there isn’t any sexual aggression behind what he’s doing. Desperation, sure, but Jay sees the relief in his face after each kiss and scratch to his flesh.

He’s making certain Jay is real.

Jay lets it happen, lets himself be used.

It’s the closest he’s come to helping anybody in a long time, anyway.


End file.
